by Dean Hughes
When Hadi told her how sorry he was, she took him in her arms and said, “Hadi, your father told me that you delivered the boxes for the drug dealer because you wanted to help me get to a dentist. And don’t forget, you did help me. I couldn’t have lived with so much pain much longer.”
She kissed him on the top of the head, and Hadi felt better. He was relieved to hear her words, but he knew at the same time that what he had told Malek was true. People couldn’t do bad things even if they thought they had good reasons.
The hardest thing for Hadi was to explain everything to Khaled. He knew his brother looked up to him, and even though Khaled had heard the things the man in Hamra had said, he was clearly astounded when he heard Hadi admit that he had delivered drugs for a drug dealer. He said he understood, but Hadi sensed that he was disappointed his big brother would do such a thing. Baba had often spoken out against the evil that drug dealers caused.
Aliya and the younger children understood little of what was going on. But clearly they knew that their troubles had gotten worse. They had grown quiet and wary. Even Aliya seemed to know this was not a time to create problems.
Reality was hanging in the air, worse than the usual stink of their room. Baba let everyone know that no one could leave the building, and after he made a quick trip down the street to stock up on a few groceries, he stayed inside himself. He asked Hadi a couple of times about the exact words the man in Hamra had used. What Baba wondered was whether he could show up in a different part of Hamra and maybe earn a bit of money until Rabia was better, but Hadi repeated the warning that Rashid would kill the entire family. Baba thought he might actually go unnoticed in Hamra, but it was leaving the house that might be his undoing.
Rashid, somehow, knew that Hadi and his family lived in Cola, and he might have sent someone out to ask questions about a family named Saleh. Baba decided that the risk was too great. When they finally left the house, he told Hadi, they had to make a dash from the neighborhood. There was a big bus station at the Cola intersection, but Baba feared that it might be watched. He thought it might be better to take a bus from a closer stop, make their way to the Dora intersection, and then depart Beirut from there.
Three days went by and Rabia’s lungs were clearing, but she was tired and weak. Each day Hadi wondered whether they might leave the next day. It was on the fourth day of hiding, in the afternoon, that Mama agreed Rabia could travel so long as she didn’t have to walk very far. “It won’t be far, and she can sleep on the bus,” Baba told her. “But we have to go.”
So Mama told the children to wear everything they could, under their coats. She carried Jawdat and Baba carried Rabia. Mama had tucked a bag of rice and some rolled-up bread into a grocery net, which she asked Khaled to carry.
Hadi grabbed his book, slipped it under his belt, and put on his jacket and then his coat over that, and then he waited, anxious. He carried Aram and walked down the stairs ahead of the others, and then he stopped at the landing at the bottom. Aliya and little Samira both looked terrified, their eyes wide. He wanted to tell them he was sorry, to make everything right somehow, but there was no way to do that. They had to escape—as fast as possible.
Hadi handed Aram to Khaled, and then he said, “Baba, let me look outside. I might recognize someone if we’re being watched. Everyone wait inside until I come back.”
He stepped out the door, prepared to scan the area. What he saw immediately was a man standing across the narrow little street by the electrical supply store. He had a dark hat on, pulled down close to his eyes. The man reacted when he saw Hadi, stood straight, and then walked forward and motioned for Hadi to come to him. By then Hadi had recognized the man; it was Fawzi. Hadi jumped back and then stepped into the apartment building. “A man is out there,” he said. “One of Rashid’s men.” Hadi had thought about something like this happening; he already knew what he had to do. “Go out the back door. I’ll make a run and lead him away from the house. I’ll meet you at Dora as soon as I can get there.”
“No, Hadi,” Baba said. “He’ll grab you and—”
But Hadi didn’t listen to his father; he stepped back outside. He knew he could outrun Fawzi, if he could just get past him. But Fawzi was close now, standing in front of him.
“How did you find me, Fawzi?” He tried to laugh. He needed to stall for time so his family could get away, and he wanted to lull Fawzi into relaxing a bit.
Fawzi laughed. “We have you to thank for staying around and giving us time to track you down. Cola is a big area, but as we got closer, we found that people around here know your father, and they knew which building you live in. I didn’t know your apartment number, but if you hadn’t come out soon, I was going to knock on some doors. You just saved me the trouble. I’m afraid Allah let you down this time.” He sounded satisfied with himself, almost friendly, as though he had won a little game of chess.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“That’s not up to me. But I’m sure Rashid has some good ideas. Come on, let’s go. Maybe we’ll stop and get us a shawarma sandwich along the way. I’m hungry.” And this he seemed to think was very funny. He laughed loudly and his voice echoed down the street, through the buildings.
At the same moment, another man—a younger man—stepped from the entranceway to another building. Hadi didn’t know him, but he walked toward them.
“Let’s go,” Fawzi said, and he grabbed the shoulder of Hadi’s coat, but Hadi had not zipped it. He twisted and pulled his arms loose, and the coat came away in Fawzi’s hand. Then Hadi sidestepped, avoided Fawzi’s grab, and took off running—away from the other man. What flashed into Hadi’s mind was that it was that young man who might have a chance to catch him, but Hadi could navigate the crazy alleys of Cola better than these men could. He might get caught, but he had to prolong the chase until his family was safely out of the neighborhood.
He ran hard and cut through traffic at the first corner, but when he glanced back, the young man had made his way through the cars and, if anything, was gaining on him. Then Hadi remembered the fence. He sprinted all out to an alley, turned in, and ran to the chain-link fence at the end. Kids in the neighborhood had dug out a little gap to use as a shortcut to another part of the neighborhood. He ran to the spot, threw himself down, and tried to scramble under. But his jacket caught on the metal points on the bottom of the fence. That delay was all the man needed. He grabbed Hadi’s leg and began to pull him back. Hadi kicked wildly, broke the hold, drove himself forward, then kicked loose again when the man tried to grasp his ankle. He scrambled forward again, and he let the heavy wire tear his jacket, but in his haste to get up, it dug into his back. He felt the wire cut a long slice down the line of his spine.
He didn’t think about the pain, didn’t care. He jumped up, took a look back to see the man still down on his knees, cursing Hadi, and Fawzi now lumbering up the alley, trying to catch up.
Hadi ran along the fence and slipped between two buildings, out to another street, and then he ran through alleys, taking a varied route, one that he didn’t think the men could ever guess to follow. He didn’t know how they might try to find him, but he didn’t dare run to the bus stop where his family was going. There was another bus route that headed toward Bauchrieh. From there he could make it through Bourj Hammoud to Dora. It was a long run to the bus stop, though—and eventually, a long walk, as Hadi wore down. He kept looking in all directions, looking for the men, for anyone who might be watching him. He spun all the way around a few times, surveying everything in sight.
When he reached the street where the bus stopped, an older woman asked him whether he was all right. She could see his torn jacket—and surely the blood. “I cut myself,” he said. “It isn’t too bad.”
“It is bad. You need to get some help.”
“I’ll go to a hospital,” Hadi said. “But I need to meet my mother and father. They’ll take me there.”
But then she did something that surprised Hadi. She was wearing
a hijab and a long black robe, but she had a shawl over her shoulders—a pretty patterned one that looked expensive to Hadi. She took off the shawl and fit it inside his jacket and his ripped shirt. He felt the pain now, but he felt her gentleness, too. “When you get on the bus, press your back against the seat and against the shawl. That will slow the bleeding.”
“I’ll bring the shawl back to you if I can. How can I—”
“It’s all right. You keep it. Give it to your mother. But you must get to a hospital as soon as possible.”
“I will. I promise.”
Hadi knew that the Makassed General Hospital was not far away, but if he went there, his family wouldn’t know where he was. He had to get to them and then worry about the cut on his back. But it was hurting bad now, especially when he got on the bus and pressed against the seat.
The bus moved slowly in all the afternoon traffic, and Hadi’s pain kept getting worse. By the time he reached the intersection by Bourj Hammoud, he knew he had a long walk to Dora—the same walk he had taken with a bloody head. And he realized what he had to do again. He couldn’t walk all the way to Dora, look for his family, and then find some way to get help. He had to get to Garo.
Hadi was not as dazed as he had been the day Kamal had smashed his head against the wall, but he knew that blood was seeping through the shawl, through everything, down into the back of his pants. He tried not to look at anyone, so he wouldn’t have to explain himself, and he walked hard. He was exhausted by the time he reached Garo’s fruit stand. And when he stopped in front of his friend, Garo took a big breath. “What’s happened to you now?” he asked. “Did that man beat you again?”
“No.” But he was out of strength, out of breath, and for all he knew, out of blood. “I cut myself,” he said. “On my back.”
What followed was much the same as before. Garo took him to the back of his stand, helped him get his shirt off—the shirt Garo had bought for him. But once he cleaned Hadi a little, Garo said, “This is serious. I can’t fix it. A doctor needs to stitch you up.”
“I have to find my family. I told them I would meet them at the Dora intersection. They’re in danger, Garo. Someone wants to hurt us—all of us.”
“Why?”
“I’ve done things, Garo. I don’t know how to tell you.”
“It’s okay. Don’t try right now. But you can’t walk there and back. You shouldn’t walk any more at all. Wait just a minute.” Garo went out front, and Hadi heard him letting down the canvas that covered his fruit stand. And then he heard nothing—except the street traffic—until Garo returned. “I have a taxi out front. I’m taking you to a hospital—the one on St. Joseph Street.”
It was a hospital Hadi had seen many times when he walked through Bourj Hammoud, but it wasn’t one that treated poor people. “I can’t pay for a hospital,” he told Garo.
“Don’t worry about things like that right now. Let’s get you over there.”
“My parents won’t know where I am.”
“I know. We’ll get you to a doctor, make sure they’ll take care of you, and then I’ll take a taxi to Dora. You can tell me where to find them.”
Hadi wasn’t sure he knew where to find them, but he was having trouble thinking now. The pain in his back was filling his mind.
Just as Garo was helping Hadi into the taxi, a truck pulled up in front of the fruit stand. A man got out of the truck, but before he could say anything, Garo said, “Just stack the boxes in the back. I have to leave for a while.”
“Leave?” the man asked. “Who’s watching your stand?” Hadi heard his Syrian accent.
“No one,” Garo said. “But people don’t steal from me. They all know me in this neighborhood.”
The deliveryman laughed. “That’s how things ought to be,” he said.
The taxi ride was short—but not fast. Traffic in Bourj Hammoud was packed tight. And then, in the emergency room, the woman at the desk had all sorts of questions about what had happened to Hadi and who was going to pay his bills. Hadi only said that he had been climbing under a chain-link fence and cut his back on the wire. Garo answered the other questions. He said that he would take care of the expenses.
“Garo, I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
“Don’t worry about it, Hadi. We just need to get you fixed up.”
The emergency room was crowded and people were frustrated. They kept forcing their way to the desk to complain about their wait. The woman paid little attention to them, but she did get someone to put Hadi on a gurney and then wheel him to a curtained area—like the one the doctor had used for Rabia in the other hospital. A nurse cleaned the wound better than Garo had. But she was in a hurry, not as gentle as Garo, and not interested in talking to Hadi or doing anything but getting the job done.
“Will someone take care of him soon?” Garo asked her. “We’ve been here half an hour.”
But that set off Hadi’s other worry. “You have to go find my family,” he told Garo.
“I know. But I won’t leave until I know you’re getting help. This cut is long and deep. It needs to be closed.”
“I’ll talk to the doctors. We’ll do the best we can,” the nurse said, and she walked away.
All the cleaning the nurse had done had fired Hadi’s pain again. He clenched his teeth and tried not to cry. But as the pain subsided a little, he looked up to see Garo, who was standing at the head of the gurney. Hadi saw pain there, too, in those old brown eyes. “I’m sorry,” Hadi told him. “I keep causing trouble for you.”
“Oh, Hadi,” Garo said, “it feels good to be useful. I’ve spent too much time alone these past few years.”
“Thank you,” Hadi said, and then he said something he had never said to anyone outside his family. “I love you, Garo.”
Garo didn’t say anything, but he patted Hadi’s head, and Hadi saw tears in his eyes.
A doctor did appear soon after that, and he seemed motivated, more than anything, to take care of the matter quickly. He gave Hadi a series of shots, all down his back. Each shot felt like a knife stab. Hadi jerked every time and strained not to scream. But the doctor left then, and as the numbness set in, Hadi began to breathe normally. He finally had enough clarity to think about his family. He wondered whether they had avoided Fawzi and the other man and made it to Dora.
The doctor returned a few minutes later and began to stitch up Hadi’s back, and at that point Garo said, “You should be all right now, Hadi, so tell me what your family looks like, and I’ll go try to find them.”
Hadi tried to think what he could say. “It’s my mother and father and six children,” he said, “the oldest is ten and the youngest just a baby. All of them are wearing winter coats—or maybe just holding them by now.”
“All right. I’ll go find them, and I’ll bring them here.”
Hadi thanked him again. But earlier Hadi had noticed something, and it had come back to his mind these last few minutes. Just as Garo was about to walk away, Hadi said, “Garo, that man who delivered the fruit to your stand, was he Syrian?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I just wondered. But go ahead. Find my family.”
So Garo left.
Once the doctor had sewn up the cut in Hadi’s back and given him a tetanus shot—another sharp stab—he told Hadi that he needed to stay in the hospital overnight. He would need antibiotics to guard against infection, and he needed rest. So the doctor gave Hadi another injection to help with the pain, and even though Hadi tried, he couldn’t stay awake after that.
18
Hadi was confused when he woke up. It took him a moment to remember that he was in a hospital, but the strange thing was that Malek was standing by his bed and he was saying, “Good morning, Hadi. How are you feeling?”
Hadi realized he must have slept all night. But how had Malek managed to find him? Hadi shut his eyes and tried to think, but he drifted back to sleep. When he opened his eyes again, it was Mama who was saying, “Hadi, wake up now. Tell us if y
ou feel all right.”
Hadi saw his mother, with Malek next to her, and strangely, Emil and Klara Riser. He couldn’t imagine how they would know he was there.
“Hadi, does your back hurt?” Mama was asking.
He couldn’t think whether it hurt or not, so he decided it didn’t, but as soon as he said “No,” he realized that he did feel something: mostly an ache, not a sharp pain.
“They don’t want you to stay here—because we have no money,” Mama told him. “Your friend Garo said he would pay—but it has already cost him too much.” She touched Hadi’s forehead and then ran her fingers over his hair. “Do you think you can get up?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Hadi said, but he didn’t try. It wasn’t the pain; it was his brain that seemed unready to take in all that was going on around him. He looked across the room at the Risers. They were smiling at him, and then Klara said, with her funny accent, “Sabah alkhayr.” “Good morning.”
“Let me help you sit up,” Mama said.
But Hadi asked, “Where’s Baba?”
“Baba is with the other children. They’re downstairs. They slept in the chairs in the lobby last night. I stayed here with you.”
Hadi did sit up, with his mother’s help, but now he felt more pain and he moaned. “The doctor said he would give you pills for the pain,” she said. “Do you need one now?”
“No.” The pain was not terrible, and mostly, he needed to be awake. He looked at Malek. “How did you get here?” he asked.